British Repelled at Gaza: Ottoman Defense Holds

Seventeen thousand Ottoman and German defenders stopped a British advance that should have overwhelmed them. At the First Battle of Gaza on March 26, 1917, British and ANZAC forces under General Sir Charles Dobell attacked the fortified town at the gateway to Palestine, fought their way into the outskirts, and then withdrew at the very moment they were winning. Confused communications and a premature order to retreat turned a near-victory into an embarrassing failure. The British Egyptian Expeditionary Force had been pushing across the Sinai Peninsula since early 1916, building a railway and water pipeline as it advanced. Gaza sat at the coastal end of a defensive line stretching inland to Beersheba, blocking the road to Jerusalem. General Dobell planned a swift assault to take the town before Ottoman reinforcements could arrive, relying on the Desert Mounted Corps to encircle Gaza from the east while infantry attacked from the south. The plan nearly worked. By late afternoon, Australian and New Zealand mounted troops had cut off Gaza from the north and east, and British infantry had penetrated the town's outer defenses. But a thick sea fog had delayed the attack's start by several hours, and as darkness approached, Dobell's chief of staff, Brigadier General Ninnes, ordered a withdrawal, believing the attacking forces were more disorganized than they actually were. Ottoman commander Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein later admitted his garrison was on the verge of surrender when the British pulled back. The failure led to a second assault on Gaza in April that was repulsed even more decisively, costing 6,000 British casualties. It took General Edmund Allenby's flanking attack through Beersheba in October 1917 to finally crack the Gaza-Beersheba line and open the road to Jerusalem. The First Battle of Gaza stands as a case study in how poor communication can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.